2024 Aston Martin DB12 Volante Just as Good without a Roof

• The Aston Martin DB12 Volante comes with a 671-hp Aston-tuned version of the AMG 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 mated to a ZF eight-speed automatic transmission routing power to the rear locking e-diff.

• Top down, with the wind blocker in place, the Volante sounded as quiet as the Coupe we’d driven only months before in Monaco.

• Our Caribbean Blue Pearl 2 loaner stickered at $339,500, while a base Volante starts at $265,000 before destination. Look for them in dealerships starting in Q4.

Elegance and sporty precision meet and marry in the beautiful Aston Martin DB12 Volante. They’d already dated in the DB12 Coupe, but now they’re serious. They’ve met each other’s parents, which are: AMG for the powertrain and Aston Martin for everything else.

With a 671-hp Aston-tuned version of the AMG 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 mated to a ZF eight-speed automatic transmission routing power to the rear locking e-diff, the powertrain is just about perfect for this ride.

There’s no slip or delay in delivering power to the rear wheels, while some of the AMG immediacy has been dampened just enough to make the ride more enjoyable and less hectic than what you’ll find in an AMG GT, which has slightly sportier pretensions.

Wrap all that in this beautiful, svelte, slightly wider, oozingly luxurious composite body, then stow the eight-layer fabric roof completely flat under the rear deck in only 16 seconds (at up to 31 mph!) and you have the perfect recipe for cruising comfortably in California.

Which is exactly where we cruised. In fact, an Aston Martin may technically be a legal requirement for residents of Malibu, through whose sumptuously curving canyons we carved.

Top down, with the wind blocker in place, the Volante sounded as quiet as the Coupe we’d driven only months before in another waterfront enclave of the rich and famous (Monaco). With the top down, it’s almost as serene.

“It was in a good place from when we did the aero acoustics, as we called it, for DB 11, and it’s had further optimization for this car,” said Simon Newton, director of vehicle performance, whose career includes stints at Lotus, Bentley, and even Williams F1. “And it is good.”

Likewise, and you’ll notice this as soon as you set off on your test drive, especially if the dealership is located anywhere near a curve, the car is surprisingly sure-footed. With a constant 13.09:1-ratio electric power-assisted steering (EPAS), it goes exactly where you point it.

There’s no imprecision anywhere, neither entering nor powering out of a turn. And I entered and powered out of about 300 hundred in my drive in Da ‘Bu. That’s because Aston didn’t simply chop the top off and pray no one ever drives over a bump. No, the engineering team went to great lengths to strengthen the entire structure.

“There’s quite a lot of redesign of the body,” said Newton of the aluminum underbody’s design. “The key structural elements that are different are the shear panels front and rear, as well as up-gauged what we call the garden gate, which looks like a garden gate in that it’s like an X frame.”

Meaning the X frame we see when we pop the hood?

“It’s not the X frame on top of the engine. It’s actually in front of the engine, and it helps to tie the front longerons of the car together.”

(A longeron is a load-bearing member of the car’s structure, as you know.)

Aston also increased the gauge of the cross brace above the engine, reengineered those shear panels, and more solidly tied together the rear damper top mounts.

“And that’s quite key,” Newton said of the latter. “Especially with a convertible, to help give you the lateral response at the back end of the car compared to a car without that element.”

Convertibles need that more than coupes, Newton said. “If you really want the car to feel nice and short and reactive, you need to be able to connect the rear suspension load across the car.”

The DB12 Volante certainly did feel nice and short and reactive from behind the wheel. The $14,500 optional carbon ceramic brakes likewise never faltered. This is not just a pretty face, though the face is pretty.

While torsional rigidity—what you’d get trying to twist a beer can about its longitudinal axis—is about the same as the Coupe, it’s the bending resistance—what you’d notice if you tried to fold that same beer can in half—that could really take a hit when you remove the roof of a car. This one doesn’t feel like it’s given anything up to its fixed-roof rival.

“The car does not suffer like most convertibles in torsion,” Newton said. “It’s not as far away from the coupe as usually you might expect.”

In fact, torsional stiffness is up about 5% compared to the DB11 Volante. The changes made to the aluminum body structure were done more for lateral response which, to use an engineering term, was fantastic.

“For many of our customers, roof down driving is the greatest pleasure,” said Aston Martin CEO Amedeo Felisa. “With the new DB12 Volante we have changed the rules, creating a car that intensifies those feelings by preserving all the purity and exceptional sporting capabilities of the DB12 Coupe. A rare and true sporting convertible in every respect, this is a car to challenge preconceptions and find a new generation of Volante customer.”

Those customers will appreciate the engineering that went into this convertible as soon as they step on the gas and feel the surge of 590 lb-ft of torque from the V8. Aston says its tune of the AMG engine included modified cam profiles, optimized compression ratios, larger turbos, and increased cooling to achieve an increase in output of 34% compared with the DB11.

That output can be funneled into your choice of four ESC and five pre-defined dynamic modes. At maximum performance it returns a 0-60 mph time of 3.6 seconds and a top speed of 202 mph (top up).

All that comes with the latest Aston Martin infotainment and touchscreens, too—same as the DB12 Coupe. That includes Aston Martin’s next-generation infotainment system.

“Entirely bespoke and developed from scratch with industry-leading suppliers of hardware, UI, UX, and audio systems, it is Aston Martin’s first in-house system,” Aston boasts. “It is also supplemented by a new Aston Martin customer connectivity app. Developed for iOS and Android, it allows interaction, control and feedback to and from the customer’s DB12 via their personal device.”

It’s displayed on a new 10.25-inch “Pure Black” touchscreen with full capacitive single and multi-finger gesture control, Aston says. Unlike many systems nowadays that rely solely on onscreen menus and submenus, this one has actual buttons for things like gear selection, drive selection, heating and ventilation, and override switches for chassis, ESP and exhaust, lane assist, and park distance control.

The drawback? My Caribbean Blue Pearl 2 loaner stickered at $339,500. But take heart, a base Volante starts at just $265,000 before destination. Look for them in dealerships starting in Q4.

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